Psychology

Over the past few weeks I have been researching into my main subject area of immersion to get an idea of what it fundamentally means. And from this study, looking at various articles, books and websites I felt I had figured out the meaning of the term Immersion, when it comes to game environments. What is immersion?, "It is when the primary focus of an individual is towards what's on screen rather than the surrounding world i.e. they become engrossed within their virtual surroundings".


Several elements need to come into play, for what is described as immersion, when it comes to games. You have to be able to create an atmosphere to envelope the player.To do this you first need to think about what themes and styles you will incorporate into the level and stick to them, (it is no good if you use too many themes/styles otherwise this will break the immersion and make it less believable e.g. (Having a demonic castle next to a Greek temple).

The next thing to which needs to be involved is the story of the game level. If you can somehow include the history of the environment or something to do with a character even a emotional attachment to something this can add depth to the story (objects in the environment). To create a successful story all these things are needed, but you need to be able to either relate to the player or find something new/ unexpected.


 Here is a process of how immersion and atmosphere of a game are achieved.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2013/09/why-gone-home-is-so-immersive/

Theme

Because in most of my previous projects being more so related to western culture, I wanted to change it up a little bit, going to the other side of the world and moving to eastern culture. In the past I have been very inspired by eastern culture, but never really properly looked into it. I want to create a level to which would probably contain a house and a garden, but I am undecided to either go for something like a zen garden or a murder scene, (yeah two opposite ends of the scale), both involving the factor of eastern culture. But up until I decide upon which theme I will choose for the final piece,  I will be doing studies on which type of level will be more effective with immersion ( and creating mini environmental pieces to test the themes).

Here are some of the games to which inspire me to head towards a murder scene level.

(Silent hills)

http://viewy.ru/search/norman%20reedus

(Murdered: soul suspect)

http://www.gamecrate.com/review-murdered-soul-suspect-tells-interesting-story-uninteresting-gameplay/8314

http://guitarpornography.tumblr.com/

Here are some examples of influences for the zen garden environment map

(Far cry 4)

http://www.gizorama.com/2014/review/far-cry-4-review-characters-welcome

http://www.gamer.no/artikler/anmeldelse-far-cry-4/165494

(Metal gear rising)

http://www.trueachievements.com/n12890/metal-gear-rising-revengeance-hits-the-jetstream.htm

http://www.imore.com/epic-games-releases-unreal-engine-4-based-epic-zen-garden-demo-ios-8

Inspirations

Here are some examples of artists to which so far have inspired me in which direction/s I could possibly take for my 3D environment project.

Tim Spanjer - 3D Environment Artist

http://timspanjer.com/index.html

 Currently works at on environments for a commercial company called TRICK 3D and has been featured in 3D world magazine.

http://www.trick3d.com/#home

Scott Homer - 3D Environment Artist

http://scotthomer.co.uk/

Currently works for Cryteck and has made some of the environments for Crysis 3. Also has been featured on online articles, from sites such as ’Kotaku’, ’IGN’, ’Joystiq’, ’Eurogamer’ because of his inspirational Bioshock artwork.

http://www.crytek.com/

Christoffer Radsby - 3D Environment Artist

http://christofferradsby.com/

Has worked on titles such as Far cry 3 (Ubisoft) and Motorstorm apocalypse (Evolution Studios).

brainstorming

Here is my jellyfish, containing tons of questions that I need to ask myself and many of the ideas I have came up with for this project.

Sure, I have thought about what I want to do with my project e.g. (the title), but I haven't really asked myself many of the various questions about the project, such as, what particular style do I want to go for? (Do I want to go down the cartoon/ Illustrative style which would most likely involve cell-shading or simple colour arrangements. The problems with cell-shading though is that it is not a particular highly used style with the exception of games such as "journey, Borderlands 2 and prince of Persia etc". The fact that it is so rarely used may suggest that it is a harder process to go through so it may be a possibility to go for more of a realistic style - this will be determined through later experimentation.

Starting my project and thoughts

Over this next year, starting from September,  I will posting anything and everything to do with my progress, research and the journey I take for developing my 4th year computer arts project.

For the subject of this dissertation, I want to choose something to which peaks my interests based on my relevant skills  and somewhat challenges me to create pieces filled with emotion and interactivity. But the main questions that I want to ask myself, this year are which skills will be relevant for me to focus on?, will my project cover a broad spectrum or focus mainly on one particular area? and finally what will I be aiming for?, when it comes to the final piece?.